Music has always been central to identity—people express their personality through the artists they listen to. It's common to carry thousands of songs in our pockets these days; smartphones have gigabytes and gigabytes of onboard storage, and the contents of our devices are often mirrors of ourselves. Faster processors and more storage enable today's smartphones to do more than ever before; there are more ways to listen to music on your portable device today than even a year ago, and storefronts and apps are continually popping into existence.

Much can be made about the distinction between having a song and owning a song, but the ubiquity of high speed data networks mean that it's mattering less and less where the music actually lives—whether on your phone or in the cloud, it's easy to rock out with your phone out.

In parts one and two of our Ultimate Smartphone Guide, we determined the best phone in each major ecosystem, and then we gave our recommendations for cool social apps on each platform. This time, we're going to look at how to discover and listen to music—reviewing both the buying experience with storefronts and also the major streaming services.

iOS and the iTunes Store

The iTunes Store was the first widely successful online music-buying platform. It originally sold 128kbps, FairPlay DRM-encumbered AAC files for 99 cents a pop, but it later updated to 256kbps, DRM-free, iTunes Plus AAC files with variable pricing after Apple relented to industry demands.

If you use an iPhone (or other iOS device), the iTunes Store is a great place to start discovering and buying digital music. It's organized by genre and includes a variety of lists for top singles and albums—for the store as a whole and for individual genres. Tell Apple what your favorite genres are and the company will send weekly e-mails telling you about top albums, free "singles of the week," and new releases in those genres.

Enlarge/ The iTunes app on iOS is used to browse the iTunes Store, including searching for particular artists.

Though the iTunes Store is largely dominated by popular major label releases, Apple has done a good job of courting indie labels. The breadth of artists and albums available can be surprising.

The iTunes Store has the added benefit of being available in more countries and territories (119 as of December 4) than many other competing online music stores, all of which have to navigate a draconian morass of territorial-based licensing regimes.

If you don't use an iOS device, the iTunes Store may have less appeal. Android and Windows Phone devices have their own music store options which are better integrated into those platforms. If you use a Windows PC, you can still buy and download iTunes Plus tracks—the AAC format is widely supported on most mobile devices—but syncing them on a non-iOS device requires additional software. Linux users have no official version of iTunes, and therefore no way (and we suspect little desire) to browse or buy music from the iTunes Store on the desktop.

(There's also the fact that iTunes, despite being a fairly complete media management solution if you're using an iPhone, isn't always everyone's favorite application.)

iTunes in the Cloud

Using the iTunes Store along with an iOS device does offer a few advantages, however. iTunes in the Cloud gives all your devices access to any purchased music any time you like. Just pop in to the "Purchased" section in the iTunes app and download any track that is not already on your device.

For the sticklers out there, be forewarned: iTunes will keep all the tracks you download on your device until you start running out of space. Older downloads will be automatically deleted to make room for newer ones, and there doesn't seem to be a clear way to delete tracks once you've downloaded them. We imagine this won't be a problem that for the average user, but serious music fans may get annoyed with this limitation.

iTunes Match

Apple also offers a sort of paid, expanded version of iTunes in the Cloud, called iTunes Match. For $24.99 a year, iTunes Match allows you to either "match" or upload up to 25,000 tracks to iCloud, which can then be downloaded to any device. The "match" part works by analyzing your library, and if a track matches one offered in the iTunes Store, Apple merely stores a reference to that song in iCloud. You can then download the full iTunes Plus version of that song, even replacing your less-than-stellar 64kbps CD rips from the mid-'90s.

Tracks that can't be matched up for whatever reason are uploaded to iCloud as-is. If you have a crappy rip of a song, it will still be crappy, but at least you'll be able to pull it from iCloud to your iPhone—anytime you feel like, anywhere you are—as long as you have a network connection.

Like most of Apple's products and services, the company doesn't do much to serve the 5 percent of users that fall outside of "typical." If your music library contains more than 25,000 tracks, iTunes Match won't even work (though there are workarounds).

However, if your music library can fit on a typical laptop and your tastes don't veer too far off the beaten path, the iTunes Store is a good option.

Android and Google Play Music

Google's music experience doesn't have the history of some of its digital retail competitors, but thanks to the company's power, its store has built up quickly. The store now has a huge catalog of both apps and content available for users to buy, and while the shopping experience isn't the best, it's not easy to stump.

Google doesn't make clear how it curates the discovery portions of its Play store; that is, whether "top" albums or songs are strictly the most popular in terms of songs, plays, or both (or neither). Still, it keeps a fresh cycle of new releases and popular stuff at the forefront for people who would rather not dig for their favorite music.

One of the most interesting experiments to conduct on different music services is to compare the top albums or songs listed on each of them. Even if Google guides the selection a little, it's at least a bit revealing about your Android-using compatriots and their prevailing tastes. For instance, on the same day, the top three albums on Spotify were "The Lumineers" by The Lumineers, "Take Me Home: Yearbook Edition" by One Direction, and "Christmas" by Michael Buble, while on Android's Google Play store, they were "The Carter IV" by Lil Wayne, "Hybrid Theory" by Linkin Park, and "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys. Both selections are more or less pop music, but they skew in different directions.

The top albums in the Google Play store.

Android's top songs focus a bit less on hard pop: the top three there are "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys, "Some Nights" by Fun, and "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers. But the last two are the main exceptions to the top 10; the rest are strictly pop songs.

Likewise, in the featured section, Google features recent pop released front and center, but it throws a couple of curveballs. For instance, one of Google's suggestions was "Music of Faith and Devotion"—not a genre I'd normally expect to generate a huge response from the general populace, but the holiday season may be to blame here.

Below recent releases is a "recommended for you" section, where Android will suggest music based not only on your purchases, but also your viewing history from YouTube. After we wantonly watched to a string of Beyonce music videos, Beyonce's appearance in this section freaked us out more than a little. This feature can also generate recommendations based on what your friends buy or listen to, if you add them through the application.

The music store in Google Play has simple transitions and is not as animation-heavy as what we see in the Windows Phone music store. The quad-core Snapdragon in the LG Optimus G we used for these screenshots was quick to load artwork as we scrolled and swiped between screens, and operations stayed smooth.

The Web implementation of Google Play, on the other hand, is quite a bit pickier. For example, searching "beyonce" turns up nothing whatsoever; you have to either get the accented é at the end in there, or else use the dropdown menu to locate your Beyonce collection.

After you download a song, the store describes your listening options.

When you buy a song or album within the Play store on a phone or tablet, the song is automatically made available for streaming from the Google play website (play.google.com/music) as well as downloaded to your device.

After buying a song or album, Google also allows you to share one free listen of that content with a friend. This is moderately useful when you are discovering something new, but probably far better in terms of driving organic sales. Google, you schemers.

Google also offers a sizable contingent of free music. It's nothing like Spotify or other services that offer free streaming, but it's also not just a smattering of artists looking to get their name out there. Rather, it appears to music for which Google is willing to eat the costs if it will get you to listen and use the service. A sample of included artists at the time of our research: Coldplay, Mumford and Sons, Oasis, Social Distortion, and The Verve Pipe.

The selection is rotating, and once the song moves off of the free list, you'll have to buy it to continue listening. This is sort of a neat way to try before you buy, but it's a very limited version of better services (i.e. Spotify) out there; the only advantage it offers is a smooth transition between the try and the buy.

Still, Google Play doesn't require that you buy music through it to be able to download or stream. Similar to iTunes Match, Google can store up to 20,000 or your own songs in the cloud that you can stream, download, or arrange into playlists on your devices as you see fit.

The media experience on WP8 is a huge downgrade from WP7.5. The player does feel jittery at times when starting music/switching songs. WP7.5 didn't do this. On the computer side, syncing with the excellent Zune software is replaced by the worst sync app ever. The DRM between Pass songs downloaded on your computer and on your phone is different, so you have to download a copy per device now. Non-US people can't sync podcasts to their phone unless they sync with iTunes (who the fuck wants iTunes on Windows!?) or use a third-party podcast app to download directly to device. And then of course podcast playback doesn't sync with your computer so you can't just pick up where you left off like with WP7.5.

As someone who cannot rely on streaming in any way (or even have the option to beyond Xbox Music or Rdio, not being American), this was a huge disappointment, especially since the media experience is what brought me to Windows Phone in first place. We've been asking for Zune back for some sync sanity.

And if you don't care about any of these things, well good for you, you can ignore the sync app and just manually copy/paste files to the device or stream, but some of us want the quality experience that was lost.

While well-written, I was entirely disappointed that this article did nothing to compare the audio quality of the phones, the underlying codecs, and the listening hardware options available. Perhaps a bit too audiophile-ish of me, and I realize most consumers wouldn't know a .FLAC from AFLAC, but in-depth technical reviews are what I have come to associate ARS with in recent years. Sadly, much of the front page content has gone mainstream. Good thing I can still rely on the forums for bit-head interaction.

I feel like you folks neglected to mention that Google Play Music just plain sucks across the board. The PC "Music Manager" client is practically worthless (I've seen better UIs in intro programming class), the Android app lacks basic features like an equalizer, and some tracks just won't stream even on a very solid 3G or wifi connection. I tried and tried to love it, but through half a dozen updates, nothing has improved.

I used Winamp for a while (which obviously lacks the free streaming), but even that has barely-readable small text, buttons too close together, an EQ that only unlocks if you pay for it.

I know at least for DI, the Android app is quick and snappy 90% of the time, at least on my S3, was a tad choppy (understandably) on my overclocked, CM7.2-running CDMA Hero, though.

Also, why is there no mention, or even the thinking regarding data caps? Do the Ars staffers somehow get unlimited data on their phones, regardless of carrier, make, model of phone? What trickery are you pulling with them to do this? Especially if you pay for subscription type streaming music?

EDIT: Also, those Snapdragon ads that are just JPGs? Seriously. Stop. In a fairly picture/screen-heavy article, it makes you do a double-take, and of course, it skirts around ad blockers.....

The display here is rather odd: eight albums occupy the spotlight section, but only four full covers and two half-covers appear, and to see the rest you have to swipe right. This seems like sub-optimal (even sloppy) design, and we can't see any reason for it. However, it's not a major concern if you don't rely on the store to recommend popular stuff to you.

It's not sloppy, it's deliberate, and there's a reason for it. Swiping is free (as you're swiping through the UI anyway), and the promise of something off-screen that'll be revealed when you swipe encourages you to do so.

The display here is rather odd: eight albums occupy the spotlight section, but only four full covers and two half-covers appear, and to see the rest you have to swipe right. This seems like sub-optimal (even sloppy) design, and we can't see any reason for it. However, it's not a major concern if you don't rely on the store to recommend popular stuff to you.

It's not sloppy, it's deliberate, and there's a reason for it. Swiping is free (as you're swiping through the UI anyway), and the promise of something off-screen that'll be revealed when you swipe encourages you to do so.

The display here is rather odd: eight albums occupy the spotlight section, but only four full covers and two half-covers appear, and to see the rest you have to swipe right. This seems like sub-optimal (even sloppy) design, and we can't see any reason for it. However, it's not a major concern if you don't rely on the store to recommend popular stuff to you.

It's not sloppy, it's deliberate, and there's a reason for it. Swiping is free (as you're swiping through the UI anyway), and the promise of something off-screen that'll be revealed when you swipe encourages you to do so.

Would that explain the acute lack of information density in win8 and wp8? Encourage people to swipe away instead of actually presenting the information?

I know at least for DI, the Android app is quick and snappy 90% of the time, at least on my S3, was a tad choppy (understandably) on my overclocked, CM7.2-running CDMA Hero, though.

Also, why is there no mention, or even the thinking regarding data caps? Do the Ars staffers somehow get unlimited data on their phones, regardless of carrier, make, model of phone? What trickery are you pulling with them to do this? Especially if you pay for subscription type streaming music?

EDIT: Also, those Snapdragon ads that are just JPGs? Seriously. Stop. In a fairly picture/screen-heavy article, it makes you do a double-take, and of course, it skirts around ad blockers.....

Good point, I would be curious to know which of these have offline caching features.

I use Subsonic. It is great. I can even make changes to the code which I have done in the past. This isn't something the average user would regard as a feature though. I get to control my music, stream my music, preload my music, share my library with friends. It definitely isn't like a cloud experience like some other services up in the sky per say but I like it quite a bit.

I would probably have to say subsonic would be the choice of the person running pfsense, nas or other appliances at home.

Enjoying XBOX music pass but somehow feel now that all the music I have on my phone will be whisked away if I cancel my sub... a good motivator not to! At least it's encouraging me to find and download new music, let's see if that lasts for me.

Have it on a Lumia 920 and don't have any jittering issues, perhaps this is a limitation of the 8X? Either way, nice and smooth here!

I feel like you folks neglected to mention that Google Play Music just plain sucks across the board. The PC "Music Manager" client is practically worthless (I've seen better UIs in intro programming class), the Android app lacks basic features like an equalizer, and some tracks just won't stream even on a very solid 3G or wifi connection. I tried and tried to love it, but through half a dozen updates, nothing has improved.

I used Winamp for a while (which obviously lacks the free streaming), but even that has barely-readable small text, buttons too close together, an EQ that only unlocks if you pay for it.

Yes Music Manager does have a shite UI but really you just tell it where to look and it does it's stuff, I didn't look at it after that.

Play Music app does have an equalizer, it looks like this:

Couldn't tell you if it's available on Gingerbread devices as both my N7 and GNex are on Jelly Bean but I specifically remember it being there in ICS.

Morten Ofstad wrote:

Which stores/OS support gapless playback of albums? At some point iTunes/iOS was the only way to listen to Dark Side of the Moon, but has the situation improved?

Play Music now supports gapless playback but I have a feeling that is Jelly Bean only due to changes made to the audio system in the OS. Many Android music apps have been spoofing gapless playback for a while, including on pre-JB devices; check out PowerAmp for example.

Which stores/OS support gapless playback of albums? At some point iTunes/iOS was the only way to listen to Dark Side of the Moon, but has the situation improved?

WP8 definitely can't. I had a Lumia 920 for a couple of days before I returned it for this precise reason. I tried locally-stored AAC, MP3, WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, and WMA VBR, and re-ripped a CD in all but the first format on Windows to test this.

My understanding is that Android's default player can now handle gapless playback just fine (although I'm not sure about the various store/cloud options).

While well-written, I was entirely disappointed that this article did nothing to compare the audio quality of the phones, the underlying codecs, and the listening hardware options available. Perhaps a bit too audiophile-ish of me, and I realize most consumers wouldn't know a .FLAC from AFLAC, but in-depth technical reviews are what I have come to associate ARS with in recent years. Sadly, much of the front page content has gone mainstream. Good thing I can still rely on the forums for bit-head interaction.

I agree -- while I have my music app of choice, I was looking more for the tech bits of various flagship phones. Though I would understand if that was left out since the article was already three pages and took two people to write. A separate article about that would be nice though. Or at least a round-up of good in-depth articles from around the web.

I'm not sure what the point of pointing out the Metro nature of the WP UI has to do with anything as it seems Casey and Chris are more voicing an opinion on the design choice rather than any true functionality disadvantage. It's consistent with the design choice of the OS and I can't see how this can be pointed out as a negative against the music experience without condemning the OS as a whole. If that's the case any criticism laid at the OS seems more subjective than objective and I'm not sure how beneficial this can be to people trying to make an informed decision on a potential platform. To each their own, I know, but if that's the case I'd like to see a true round table take on the platforms.

Other than that though I really have to say the WP8 music experience has regressed a great deal from the Zune experience on WP7.5. For all the reasons Entegy mentioned above plus more. Adding your own music to the service if you have it stored on a network drive or secondary HDD is confusing to say the least. There's no real explanation by the program on how to do this, unlike Zune where once you first start it up it asks you to add libraries. If you have WP7.5 and a Win8 PC forget it, the program is practically useless. You still have to use Zune, which is bizarre to say the least. Why exclude WP7.5 from the Win8 Xbox Music experience, especially when it's as Metro as the rest of them? I'm as big a supporter of MS and Win8 as the next superfan but man they've really fucked up the experience going from Zune and WP7.5 to Win8 and WP8. Good thing there are alternatives if you like streaming music or listening to online radio.

I'd love to see a breakdown of these services, and what's available by country. I know iTunes is nearly complete in Canada, last time I looked I couldn't buy any media from Amazon. Google advertises to me, which I assume means I can, but with google I wouldn't necessarily take that for granted.

From what I remember, if pandora and last.fm are available here, it's a shadow of what the US service is, but that may have changed.

See my problem? Even after reading the article, I have absolutely no idea what's available to me, and so continue paying Apple

[edit] And last time I tried to buy an mp3 from Amazon, it let me get through to entering the billing information before telilng me "oops, actually we won't let you buy this", and I don't really feel like giving more companies by credit card number just to see if I'm allowed to buy from them.

Some gripes with Google Play:* It's not available on every phone, and it's sometimes subsumed or obviated by the OEM's (usually pretty bad) player.* It's international reach is still poor. Last I checked, it doesn't function in Canada (nor does Spotify), whereas iTunes does (as does Rdio and Slacker). * It looks like it finally supports Album Artist, but that's very recent. For the longest time, no Android player could do this, where as iTunes did it beautifully. I don't think WP (at least as of 7.5) handles this properly, yet.* It's still a little laggy. It's better than any other Android player, but the refresh of cover art is a little delayed.

I have to give iTunes and iOS this: it really does make it very easy to manage music. You don't have to think about folders and files and such: you can create a few smart playlists based on criteria and, boom, they just sync over. Ratings and play counts, too, which is nice. I learned a long time ago to not fight iTunes vis a vis folders and organization and just concentrate on tagging my music accurately and creating playlists and it's made the experience much, much more pleasant.

I agree there's precious little discussion about sound quality in this post. Admittedly we're listening on smartphones, but we're also listening on smartphones with enough storage to be legitimate options for casual listening at high quality, especially if you have a good pair of headphones and a portable AMP. So how about a few words on DAC quality, the effect of things like Beats Audio, etc.

I know the native WP8 app doesn't support FLAC but do the native iTunes and Google Play apps support it? I've been meaning to get a lot of my physical collection ported over and it's one thing about WP that annoys me. I can guess at why MS doesn't support it but what about Nokia specifically? Does their music player support it?

While the first article in the series was quite illuminating, in terms of hardware, the last two articles are disappointing misfires.

Let's look at the headline again, shall we? It says "The Ultimate Smartphone Guide". All I see is services... Services which are the same across a wide range of devices.

I thought you guys would do a real job: Compare the sound quality of the various DACs on the phones you chose in Part 1, and see which produces the best, most accurate (if not outright worthy of the "HiFi" moniker) sound, using both headphones and the output to a good amp.

That was what I expected. In this context, I don't give a damn about iTunes, Hulu, or other services. Most of these don't even work outside the U.S., and there is already AMPLE coverage - both on Ars and elsewhere on the Net - concerning streaming services and e-book stores. And to pretend that there's a connection between the first article and the subsequent "parts" is just disingenuos - these services are device-agnostic, and they would run just as well on a piece of crap Huawei or first-gen iPhone.

I wanted to see a real, honest-to-god comparison between the phones you chose in Part 1. Take those screens and put them to test when playing video; use whatever option each one of these devices offer to connect to a HDTV, and compare the output of various devices, their capability to play without stuttering, and the compatibility with as many audio/video files types (and codecs) as possible. That would have made sense. To just enumerate what's "out there", from a strictly passive point of view, is just filler journalism.

Also, why is there no mention, or even the thinking regarding data caps? Do the Ars staffers somehow get unlimited data on their phones, regardless of carrier, make, model of phone? What trickery are you pulling with them to do this? Especially if you pay for subscription type streaming music?

This didn't seem like an issue that needs constantly revisiting. Nearly every carrier has data caps, and using data will obviously use up some of your monthly allotment. It's no different than downloading apps, watching Netflix, or browsing the Web.

Just got a reminder as to why I prefer Google's offerings over Apple's: My annual sub to iTunes Match is up; haven't had to pay for the same privileges with Google's cloud service, despite the fact that I have yet to purchase content there.

I will say this, though: Play Music has some annoying quirks that are not present with any variant of iTunes I’ve ever used.

Yes Music Manager does have a shite UI but really you just tell it where to look and it does it's stuff, I didn't look at it after that.

I've had it fail to upload quite a few tracks (puts a red X next to them IIRC), with practically no explanation why. It's been a while, but I think I even tried rebuilding the MP3 itself and VBR headers in foobar2000, with no luck.

Quote:

Play Music app does have an equalizer, it looks like this: [image]. Couldn't tell you if it's available on Gingerbread devices as both my N7 and GNex are on Jelly Bean but I specifically remember it being there in ICS.

I thought you guys would do a real job: Compare the sound quality of the various DACs on the phones you chose in Part 1, and see which produces the best, most accurate (if not outright worthy of the "HiFi" moniker) sound, using both headphones and the output to a good amp.

This seems largely like an exercise in subjective listening quality, which would not only have highly variable results depending on the particular listener, but which would also be irrelevant for the large majority of smartphone buyers out there.

These guides are meant to help those that have recently chosen a smartphone, or thinking of choosing a particular one, and looking to get the most out of it for various uses. That may not be of benefit to you, but the feedback we have gotten so far suggests that it has been beneficial to lot of readers.

We could (and yet may try to) do an article along the lines of "The best smartphones for audiophiles," though I suspect any such exercise would only result in an endless stream of complaints from audiophiles complaining about our conclusions since no smartphone on the market really has DACs or amps that any "audiophile" would consider adequate.

These guides are meant to help those that have recently chosen a smartphone, or thinking of choosing a particular one, and looking to get the most out of it for various uses. That may not be of benefit to you, but the feedback we have gotten so far suggests that it has been beneficial to lot of readers.

We could (and yet may try to) do an article along the lines of "The best smartphones for audiophiles," though I suspect any such exercise would only result in an endless stream of complaints from audiophiles complaining about our conclusions since no smartphone on the market really has DACs or amps that any "audiophile" would consider adequate.

You choose to focus on a single aspect of my post (audio), and you did not address the rest.

In this case, like I said in my original post, the articles are misleading if they're presented as a series. The same services you mention here and in "part II" are available on tablets as well, so the scope is expanded way beyond mere phones, to discussing cloud services in general.

I will reiterate: I feel that connecting these articles in a series is misleading, since the phones in Part 1 are not even mentioned here. After reading Part 1, I had a different set of expectations for the "sequel materials", which you failed to deliver upon. This is an editorial criticism, it goes beyond content.

And it doesn't seem like I'm the only one who noted that, regardless of how pleased you are with your feedback from lesser-demanding souls. No offense, but it seems to me that you should be more interested in criticism than praise, because that's the only way to get better at what you're doing.

Enjoying XBOX music pass but somehow feel now that all the music I have on my phone will be whisked away if I cancel my sub... a good motivator not to! At least it's encouraging me to find and download new music, let's see if that lasts for me.

Have it on a Lumia 920 and don't have any jittering issues, perhaps this is a limitation of the 8X? Either way, nice and smooth here!

I have the 822 and no jittering issues either. In fact, I scratched my head and was going to comment when they said that.

Perhaps trying it on more than 1 phone would've been ideal. Isolate the variables.Nah. What do you think this is? ArsTechnica? Oh wait.

foresmac108 wrote:

strangelove9 wrote:

I thought you guys would do a real job: Compare the sound quality of the various DACs on the phones you chose in Part 1, and see which produces the best, most accurate (if not outright worthy of the "HiFi" moniker) sound, using both headphones and the output to a good amp.

This seems largely like an exercise in subjective listening quality, which would not only have highly variable results depending on the particular listener, but which would also be irrelevant for the large majority of smartphone buyers out there.

These guides are meant to help those that have recently chosen a smartphone, or thinking of choosing a particular one, and looking to get the most out of it for various uses. That may not be of benefit to you, but the feedback we have gotten so far suggests that it has been beneficial to lot of readers.

We could (and yet may try to) do an article along the lines of "The best smartphones for audiophiles," though I suspect any such exercise would only result in an endless stream of complaints from audiophiles complaining about our conclusions since no smartphone on the market really has DACs or amps that any "audiophile" would consider adequate.

But this is/was ArsTechnica. That level of detail is what differentiated Ars from every other site out there.

The biggest problem I've had so far with these streaming services (I'm a Spotify Premium user) is that they don't play as nice as the local media files do. For example, I can load up the Roku app and play all of my locally stored ogg/mp3 files from my phone: Very nice. But it doesn't see Spotify downloaded tunes, and it doesn't let me stream from there. The reasons are obvious, of course, but it's a genuine disadvantage of these services: They're always going to lag in terms of support for one off tasks like this.

In this case I'd *love* to be able to channel music from spotify out to my roku box (that'd be even better than a Roky Spotify app).

Oh well, time to go buy a BT audio receiver.

I do really enjoy that when I hear about a song, or artist, I can immediately search and listen to them. It's pretty rare that I'll look and the song I want isn't in there. NPR recently released a list of new musicians to listen to. I looked them all up, listened to them, and discovered I didn't like any of them. It was fantastic!